Don't go trendy, look for timeless designs that won't date your kitchen.

I think people are discovering (at least I am) the beauty and durability of quartzite. It may become more popular.

You want to know what’s trending for 2025 kitchens? Just type your question into a google search.

The light and bright trend is moving to darker and more realistic colored woods, and more jewel tones. Think 1990's hunter green and burgundy, with the late teens navy popularity already having led the way into that as the transition bridge. White cabinets have moved to the more linen or mushroom color, and the pale oak is moving to the darker Craftsman oak looks. Cherry will bounce back strong, and has never actually gone away in most of the country that doesn't follow fads.

Functional kitchens that are designed for how the cook cooks.

The idea of functional kitchens is such a good one but, for me, I needed a designer to help me formulate it. There are so many facets to consider and balance when coming up with the “right design” for your family.

I think someone needs to offer wraps for cabinets and counters. It’s hard to keep with with annual trends.

"I think the lasting trend for 2025 will be for a kitchen to have a sink, stove, and refrigerator."

That's crazy talk. Next you're going to want counters.

Olive green or harvest gold counters.

Is that Houzz rules, sushipup? I've been coming here since the GW days when everyone was anonymous (35 years ago!). When Houzz took over, they outed us all. I loved being anonymous. I could talk shop talk and give some real honest opinions on some topics. Now I have to watch what I say. LOL So.....Anyone can click on my profile if they want to. No need to spam or post links to my business. Not everyone here is in my market. Most of my customers are referrals anyway. :-) I have a homeowner profile.....but forget my password. Yes, kompy is getting old. (my user name from the early days).

So....if anyone is from near Dayton OHIO...feel free to click on my profile. I think 35 years of coming here daily...I deserve some free advertising. LOL wink wink

Not speaking for Houzz of course, but no one running a platform such as this (the forums are free, and the company wants to sell you things), wants potential customers to leave the platform with a sales pitch that eats into their business. So Houzz sells kitchen faucets, but someone, not named as a pro and never coming here before, comes on and posts to 25 different threads in one day, all with links to one plumbing supply store, to look at faucets there. Now, you wouldn't like giving them free advertising, would you?

The way I see it, you contribute a huge amount to these forums, but you never take people away from the site. Yeah, I guess you get your name out there, that's fine, but you are not actively taking business away from the company that hosts the forums.

ETA: I guess the Admin team here does consider posting your own business links to posts to be spam, because when flagged, the posts are usually removed.

I am not sure anyone would want me because I suggested "Olive green or harvest gold counters". Maybe my wife, but that could be for other reasons.

I don’t think Houzz sees anyone on the forums as a threat to their bottomline. They really dont care about the forums. All of our visits to and comments on discussion boards just boosts their search rankings.

But back to kitchen trends - do what you love so it will endure a few seasons of trends. If you need to see trend sfor new ideas Houzz stories pages has lots of trends articles.

Sorry didn't mean to sidetrack the conversation.

I'm still selling a lot of white kitchens. But also seeing some interest in wood finishes. White has been hot since the early 2000s. I've never seen a trend last this long. It's as if everyone in the world is afraid to do anything different for resale.

My advice has always been....design for the house. If the kitchen style fits the House style....it will be timeless.

"Olive green or harvest gold..." I've lived with both! (Not counters, but appliances.) My childhood home had harvest gold appliances for awhile (yeah I'm that old) and my first home purchase (city condo) had olive green appliances.

Also a reminder to donate if the appliances (or cabinets or whatever) are in good condition, even if you think they're ugly / dated. (When I swapped out the green appliances for white, I donated the refrigerator to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Keepers were happy and I'm pretty sure the animals didn't care about the color.)

I'm reading here and there that white and even off white kitchens are "going out" but I really don't see how that is possible. For example, just look at the Nancy Meyer aesthetic. Classic, timeless and frequently uses white cabinetry in the design. It's such a cozy and homey vibe. How can that be out of style?

An article on this

And another

That aesthetic is far from "classic and timeless". While every age of built in cabinetry since the 30's has had white cabinets available, projects from those decades are immediately recognizable as from those decades. You will never ever confuse a Nancy Meyers kitchen with something from the 1880's, because that's not what kitchens ever looked like during that time. Even the butler's pantries were stained wood. And kitchens didn't have built ins at all. Unfitted was the norm. Nor will you confuse it with kitchens from the 20's, 50's, or 70's. Each of those has it's age of creation indelibly stamped on it.

As others have said- design for the house. The best kitchens start with a great plan mostly irrespective of the final ‘style’. The style of the kitchen should reflect you and the house not the designer.

Dairy tables instead of Islands. Small easy to use back kichens aka dirty kitchens. Color and warmth vs white and cool colors. Cabinets that stop about 10 inches from the ceiling or no wall cabinets. Think devol style. Feeling of division and walls with double doorway vs fully open. Nostalgia and homeyness vs empty and sterile.

The back kitchen thing is interesting. I can’t see it for 98% of our normal, everyday lives. If you bake or cook or otherwise concoct as an occupation, or if you entertain frequently and have an otherwise open plan, maybe. But that isn’t most of us. We are empty nesters, or families, or singles who just want to make a cold or hot meal and enjoy it.

Thinking back to my grandmother’s house built in 1947, all the cabinets were white, easy easy-to-clean flat slab, some glass (the ones that held the glasses and dishes). Due to age and etc, eventually the cabinets and drawers stuck when they shouldn’t or didn’t stick when they should, and the next owners replaced them about 25 years ago, with white, flat slab, some glass. It suits the house.

I’m wondering how many trends come and go between kitchen remodels in a given house?

I think the new builds and high end home trend with back small intimate moody kitchens will start to creep into people realizing that a smaller personalized kitchen is nicer to work in than big open kitchens geared for entertaining rather than everyday use and enjoyment.

After a making couple throw-away comments upthread, I thought more carefully about this.

Interior decorating styles are influenced by 1) general fashion trends, 2) economic and social trends, 3) practical realities, 4) technology. Not an exhaustive list but a start.

1) Fashion trends

Someone will have to fill this part in. My cursory glance at fashion blogs suggests more understated comfortable quality than I’d expected, but as someone who buys almost all his clothing from vintage stores and hasn’t needed to knot a tie or polish a loafer in five years, your guess is way better than mine.

2) Economic and social trends

The US has enjoyed about 15 years of strong growth in income and wealth . . . for high-income families who can afford kitchen renos with designers, Subzeros, and “custom” this-and-that. For the upper middle class, low interest rates made borrowing for a reno more affordable. Add low inflation, cheap labor, and inexpensive imports.

So it has become ”normal” to see kitchens with a hundred sq ft of imported stone, $70,000 in cabinets slone, four foot long sinks with five figure price tags, drawer pulls that look and cost like jewelry, etc. While only a relatively few families can do the $150,000 kitchen renos, in our social media-fueled society many more see these extravagant kitchens and aspire to the same, hence synthetic stone with manufactured patterns, MDF cabinets “custom-picked” from a catalog, Chinese-made workstation sinks, etc - and borrowing a year’s income to afford it.

The worm always turns. The wealthy will always be, but for the rest, higher interest rates, higher inflation, higher labor costs, less affordable and tariff-burdened imports will push them away from expansive, showy, extravagant to - something else.

We’re seeing a shift from $100,000 pickup trucks to medium-small cars. From McMansions to compact houses. The big luxury goods houses are struggling. A similar “economic”-driven shift will, I think, play out with kitchens.

As for “social” influences, we have resentful populism and ego-laden billionaires trying to play in the same sandbox, environmental damage is getting harder to ignore, and technological change will increasingly eat away at the jobs and benefits of people who didn’t realize they were today’s equivalent of switchboard and elevator operators, so cue more resent and more billionaires. I’m not confident what kitchen themes will emerge - hopefully not angry nihilism, maybe “return to simpler times”?

3) Practical realities

Money or the lack of it is a practical reality, touched on above, and so are the smaller houses being built today. Average new-home size, just 1,500 sf in the 1960s, climbed through the following decades, reached 2,400 sf in the Covid stay-at-home zero-interest-rate period, and is now shrinking, with the average about 2,100 sf now and falling. The existing house stock stays unchanged, but the trade-up escalator from small starter house to larger and larger+additions may move more slowly, or stall if home price growth slows to inflation.

Small houses mean more compact, carefully designed, efficient kitchens. Some of the last decades’ trends may fade by the wayside, being neither compact nor efficient. The 48” “professional” range that hardly gets used, the dining table-sized eat-in island just steps from an actual dining table in a dining room where no-one goes, the six linear feet of cold storage worthy of a busy restaurant. None of this is remotely necessary, in practical reality.

Another practical reality is aging. Not that the average age of the US population will increase - one unrecognized benefit of immigration is it helps keep the US population from getting demographically elderly (as opposed to, say, China) - but the “wealth-weighted age” will increase. More money will be held by older households, who do the trend-setting renos. Think of what we want as we get less spry and clear-eyed. Ergonomics, lighting, fewer steps?

Household size is another. More 1-3 person households, fewer 4-5 person. Consider implications for appliance size, food storage.

4) Technology

Fewer of us will have the option of gas burners. The electric utility industry and Big Induction will scare us away from combustion. So what if feeding artificial intelligence datacenters more power than whole countries means residential electric rates double and triple; it’s not like Google et al are going to pay the full cost of the required generation and grid investments. The all-electric kitchen returns regardless.

Assuming AI hasn’t absorbed your job, making kitchen renos irrelevant to you, the technology stands ready to serve in your kitchen. One may question why this is needed, but that didn’t stop appliance WiFi and touchscreens. I guess home cooks can read instructions off a screen, insert probes into the center and outer layer of the roast, and walk away as the oven’s cameras and computers control temprature, airflow, steam to get the rosy red center and deep brown crust. One may still question why this is needed but, hey, give us humanoid robot servants and then we’re talkin’! Talking in the jobless queue, but whatever.

Until our Jetsons future, appliances and fixtures may get more multi-capable and compact for our smaller more efficient kitchens. Induction cooktops and combi speed ovens, no counter-hogging microwaves or giant range hoods. LED lights that cover bright and mood, daylight and warm. Simpler and sleeker.

So . . . Conclusions?

I think

• Less showy or faux finishes and less expensive, more sustainable materials
• Compact, efficient, elegantly designed spaces
• Design/construction requiring less imported/costly materials, less installation labor
• Styles recalling times that our rose-colored mind-glasses recall as simpler
• Much better lighting
• MCM and color takes over from “white kitchen”
• Smaller, more polyvalent, increasingly “smart” appliances

If sustainability becomes more important, I wonder if we will see fewer total makeovers? Perhaps less often? or more repurposing?

I don’t believe most people think about sustainability when choosing to reno a kitchen. They think about style and cost and occasionally function.

After all, in most renos the demo crew shows up when you’re at work and by the evening the kitchen is gutted, there’s no time to think about everything you’re throwing away.

I did actually get to think about it, because I demo’d my kitchen with big help from my son. We cut out and hauled tons of stone, cement board, plywood, tile, cabinets, drawers, sink - filled a 10 yard dumpster. I didn’t feel too bad about sawing apart and throwing out the cabinetry, it was decent Home Depot stuff but plenty of MDF and plastic and starting to fall-apart. The floor bothered me a little. All that slate, cut from a quarry, transported a long way, glued down on inches of heavy substrate, a “stone floor” with all the connotations of permanence and age, and it lasted barely a quarter-century before being dumped into a landfill. But not before exacting vengeance on our backs, knees, and hands.

I didn’t end up using any stone at all. Taking the stuff out rather put me off wanting any. Used entirely wood and stainless steel - but didn’t go looking for bamboo or hemp or anything like that.

This is like betting on a horse race as the horses enter the home stretch.

AI isn't always so I

Yes, it sounds like the poster told a chat to come up with a description and then posted it to troll for business! We're getting more and more of these useless posts! 😒

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"

Macbeth by a knows.

It looks like the post we're talking about is now gone!

John Liu writes such thoughtful & insightful posts. Always a joy to read.

His comments on sustainability & smaller, more intimate kitchens hit close to home. We bought a house last spring: small, 30-yr-old kitchen & appliances. I initially wanted to rip out the dated speckled granite with a bullnose edge. I frequently read here & on Reddit of people doing that to update their kitchens, so I didn't think twice about it. (There's your social media influence!) But after living with them, I'm glad I kept them -- didn't feel good about spending to replace a million-year-old rock because it's the wrong color & edge. I've come to appreciate the light color & unobtrusive, uniform pattern. Now I even like them.

I kept the arch topped cherry cabinets also. They're still in good shape & suit a New England house in the country. I find, too, with my experience & equipment that I can work just fine in a smaller, not perfect but good enough kitchen.

Don't know if my attitude reflects a sustainability trend or whether it's just the pragmatism of getting older.

One more point. Some of the impetus in kitchen design is modern day availability of beautiful materials & components. So much attractive stuff to choose from. In the 60s when I was a kid, if Mom needed a new kitchen light, her choices at the hardware store were a circular fluorescent or an incandescent ceiling fixture with little blue flowers on the glass (or orange flowers). Such options didn't inspire to change unless you absolutely had to.